The Dialectic of Instrumental and Objective Reason

Horkheimer and Dewey

Abstract

I intend to review the connection between Critique of Instrumental Reason and Experience and Nature. I will argue that the opposition of instrumental and objective rationality does not amount to two alternative and mutually exclusive projects of reason. Both are co-constitutive of the concept of reason since its origin. Horkheimer’s theory presupposes the possibility of an affirmative concept of instrumental reason, not entangled in social domination. However, he does not develop this implicit possibility in his approach, which in turn leads to consistency problems. Dewey’s pragmatism, with its normative conception of the instrument, could contribute to the formulation of a more differentiated concept of instrumental reason, based on a more textually-fundamented reading of his work, than that of Horkheimer himself.